Humor4u

Sometime last summer, I got together with Jon and James and talked about software, Flex, effects, and Marriott mice. It a slower, more contemplative DoS show. You'll probably feel a bit woozy yourself just watching it. From James's bear hat to his falling asleep at one point, to the mic getting turned off and us having to repeat a bunch of stuff, to the final entrance of a mouse at the end (a vermin omen, I'm sure), it has a lot to offer... to someone. I'm just not sure whom. If we had outtakes in DoS, this would be in them. Maybe when we release "Best of" compilations in the decades to come, it will be on the follow-on releases after we run out of hits, when we're just trying to make a buck any way we can to support our software habits. Enjoy: www.drunkonsoftware.com/2009/12/20/episode-22-sleeping-on-the-couch .

Animating a TextArea , the next episode in the gripping and suspenseful series CodeDependent , is now available from Adobe TV . This show shows how to animate scrolling in a TextArea component dynamically. We handle this automatically when you click in the track or on the buttons of a TextArea's scrollbar, but if you want to tell the component to scroll to a certain location in the viewport, and animate to that position, you have to do this yoursefl. We did something similar in last week's show , in which we animated a Scroller area, but in the case of TextArea we have to dive into ActionScript code to create and play the animations because of some constraints around which properties we can bind to from MXML. Here's the video: Here is the demo application: And here is the source code . Finally, here's where you can find the CodeDependent videos on iTunes . Enjoy.

Programmatic Scrolling Animation , the next episode in the gripping and suspenseful series CodeDependent , is now available from Adobe TV . This show is about animating an Scroller area programmatically. By default, areas with scrollbars will animate when you click and hold on the scrollbar's track or up/down buttons. But if you just want to move to a new scroll position, these animations don't come into play, so you need a little something extra to get that nice animated effect. Here's the video: Here is the demo application: And here is the source code . Finally, here's where you can find the CodeDependent videos on iTunes . Enjoy.

Ever wonder what this year's Devoxx conference was like after-hours? Well, even if you didn't, you might want to check out the latest video on Drunk on Software . This video is a collection of interviews and other clips I recorded that week whenever I happened to remember that I had brought along a video camera for that exact purpose. Some of the clips are of dubious video and audio quality, owing to a combination of the equipment, the operator, the mood lighting and crowd noise in the bars and restaurants, and just possibly due to the fundamental concept behind Drunk on Software videos (a sobering thought). But I'll blame the lack of natural light in Belgium at this dark and miserably cold time of year because that's just more fun. Thanks to everyone who helped out with the video, through interviews, filming, talking, and of course drinking. Enjoy... http://www.drunkonsoftware.com/2009/12/07/special-episode-devoxx-2009/

Measuring Frame Rate Performance , the next episode in the gripping and suspenseful series CodeDependent , is now available from Adobe TV . This show different notions of "frame rates" and performance in Flex applications, how they relate to each other, and ways of measuring them. Frame rates directly affect the perceived performance and smoothness of animations, so it's something near and dear to my geeky animation heart. Measuring performance may not be something you need to do in every (or any) application, but it's good to know what's going on under the hood and how to get more information if you do need it. I neglected to mention an important detail about 'render' events (thanks, Corey ). In Flash applications, if you call updateAfterEvent() to cause a render event (as we do internally in Flex effects when handling Timer events), you actually need to call stage.invalidate() to make sure that the player sends out render notifications. Without the inva

Many people are wondering what the deal is with the EU and Oracle in the whole Sun acquisition thing. I’m going to put forward a new theory: it’s about conferences. I just recovered from my trip to Devoxx , where I gave talks on Flex, effects, Adobe tools, and the Flash platform (and attended talks on various other topics). I realize that many of you reading this may not have had the pleasure of going to the conference. In fact, doing the math, it’s pretty darned improbable that anyone went: with about 3000 attendees vs. 7 billion people on the planet, there’s roughly a 99.99996% chance you didn’t go. So maybe I should give a brief intro. Devoxx is an annual developer conference in Antwerp, Belgium. The show is typically held at the coldest, most miserable time of year to allow attendees to concentrate on the most important thing: Belgian Beer. Oh, and there are lots of good technical sessions on software development (Java, Flex, Android, build tools, libraries, processes, etc.). It’